I taught first grade in a storage room. Twenty-one six-year-olds, no windows, and students with significant learning needs I had no training to address. That experience sent me on a path I'm still walking — and it keeps bringing me back to one question: why do we only ask the most important diagnostic question in math after a student has already been found eligible for special education? That question belongs earlier. For every student. Before the referral. Before the label.